1. MH 370 has, for all intents and purposes, vanished. Her flight recorder batteries are dead and now there is suspicion that she wasn’t even in the part of the ocean being searched. Until there is transparency on what was in the cargo manifest the mystery will never be resolved satisfactorily.

2. The 190 schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria was the largest mass abduction of children from a school in this century yet it never made the headlines. Most people are not even aware of its occurrence. How does the government justify not being to track an operation that must have required intensive planning and why is it not enlisting support to help get its children back?

3. India’s Narendra Modi is the target of 75 professors from 20 top UK universities who have signed a letter saying he is a danger to India’s unity and will split Hindus and Muslims. They have based this on their assessment of his acts of omission and commission and his tolerance or lack of action by him against racist and communal comments by his supporters. Yes, but have they ever met him and done a one to one or been to grass root India for an on the spot assessment?

4. Tony Blair, former PM of great Britain, says it is important to have despots rule in the Middle East because that “keep Islamist radicals under control.” Ergo, if there were democratic norms prevalent the level of terrorism would rise. Can anyone beat this for sheer undergrad nonsense? This was the man who went after Saddam Hussain and now he is pro despots and autocrats and sees no future for free elections in the Middle East.

5. The Russians are upping the stakes over Ukraine even as the US and the EU ponder sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. This is the first time the threat of sparking WW III has been articulated by Ukraine PM Arseny Yatsenuik much in the same way as the German takeover of Poland started off WWII. Will Kiev be the powder keg for the end of the world? And how long will WWIII last? An hour, maybe ninety minutes.

6. Syria’s President Assad is working his way toward a “free” election where all those candidates who could give him a fight will have a high risk of being technically disqualified as per the rules of the game since the president is deciding what these shall be. While the rest of the world is finding much virtue in all this and covering its collective cowardice of doing nothing as the death toll hits 240,000 it would be interesting if all the Opposition parties became one and voted for one without splintering their votes…that way Assad’s popularity now planned for a genteel drop from 87.6 percent to 85 percent may even fall further, much further. Can they do it; do they have the moral courage?

7. Not since Hillary and Tenzing climbed Mt Everest in May 1953 has there ever been a close down by the indispensable sherpas of Nepal who have decided that world’s highest point this years augurs ill. Last week 16 sherpas died in an avalanche, the highest casualties ever and that is just a sign of bad luck. Though Nepal depends on these summer climbs for its tourism power the sherpas don’t want to go up the mountain when the ill wind is blowing. This is so unprecedented but a sign is a sign. As many as 250 people have died trying and 4000 have reached the summit. This year the sign on the highest mountain of the world says: Closed, in mourning.

8. No one really knows why the captain of the ill-fated Sewol ferry in South Korea kept the passengers literally in the dark. He had an hour to bring them up on deck but says he didn’t because of rough seas and a lack of illumination. His call was that it was too dangerous. This might have made sense even as divers struggle to pull out 181 bodies and rising if the captain hadn’t been the first to be rescued. He and his crew pushed off the vessel before the passengers…so much for the captain going down with his ship. Efforts were made to cover up his escape by saying he was badly hurt but these have been found inaccurate. He was only lightly hurt. So far not a clue why the sip went down.

9. Are Facebook fanatics more likely to suffer from depression and low self-esteem. Research is now indicating they are and it is all connected to living vicariously. Such people find the lives of others more interesting than their own and this gives rise to feelings of inadequacy and the more they become addicted the stronger the influence…oh, get your own life.

10. Is there a little bit of racism in all of us? Like the old birds of a feather flock together even humans are conscience of being different from one another. We may all bleed red but that often insidious feeling of superiority does manifest itself. British television series Top Gear’s producer has apologized for broadcasting a “light-hearted” joke by its host Jeremy Clarkson who used the word slope, a derogatory term for people of Asian descent, while referring to a man who crossed a makeshift bridge built over a river. “That is a proud moment, but there’s a slope on it,” Clarkson said in the show. An Indian-origin actress, Somi Guha, 36, last month sued the BBC for up to one million pounds ($1.6 million) for the racist remark. The BBC says they did not know that the word ‘slope’ was derogatory for people from a region where eyes tend to slant a bit as opposed to the Caucasian cut. Sure. That is lying saying the US troops in Vietnam did not know what a gook was or the Brits had never heard of a kraut. Good for Somi Guha, whoever she is.